FreeBSD handbook, 16.3.2.2

[Gary W. Swearingen]

Nikolas Britton <nikolas.britton at gmail.com> writes:

> "# disklabel -Brw da1 auto"
> what did the -r option do, why is it used in this example when
> bsdlabel doesn't support it.

It enabled the labeling of an unlabeled "disk".  It's used because the
handbook is still in transition from the old "disklabel".  My copy has
a note there saying to omit the "-r" on >=5.1.

> "# disklabel -e da1               # create the `e' partition"
> Why do I have to make the 'e' partition, explain why 'e' is used and
> why can't use other ones like a, c, or d? An explanation of what to do
> when your editing the partition table would also be nice.

Yup, but if you're just complaining -- please don't, and if you're
trying to get it changed, please learn the proper "channels".  Problem
reports are recommended or at least sending your complaint to the doc@
mailing list, though neither of those methods is very likely to get
things changed much faster than it would anyway, unless you can
provide some alternative text -- preferably as a "diff -u" of the SGML
source files, but OK as plain text.

> "# newfs -d0 /dev/da1e"
> This command doesn't even work! and what about -O2 and -U options? if
> it did work I would have made a UFS1 partition with no soft-updates.

On 5.x?  I think the default is UFS2 and you could turn on the soft
updates at a later time.  But I get your point.

> "# mkdir -p /1"
> -p? what do I need that for?

Looks useless to me too. Maybe somebody never uses "mkdir" without it.


Some good reading:  http://www.freebsd.org/docproj/index.html